Loops and Strings

by Simona Petrescu

A teenage girl is searching for her own voice by continually comparing the present experience to the previous one; she even develops an empirical theory, according to which we are different every time we are with different people, depending on what they see in us and what role they assign to us. As it often happens in real life, the romances she goes through mingle and overlap, as she meets a new partner before she has completely forgotten the one behind her - which triggers continual associations and contrasts. It is not just the different female stances the young boys see in her, but also her own way of seeing each of them, by contrasting them to each other. Phoniness is a recurrent complaint she makes, as she feels pressed to act out roles that do not feel true to her nature. The story is mostly written from her point of view, in a third person that reveals a glimpse of the Romania of the 80s through a teenager's eyes. The book is also available in a Kindle version.

260 pages, Paperback

First published August 30, 2013

Reviews

[Mihaela Naftanaila]

The book opens with the scene of a party in a communist apartment in Bucharest (Romania). A teenage girl, Adriana, invites her friends to celebrate her birthday, now that she turns eighteen and this is an age worth remembering. She thrives on having the best music of those years, the cool people, enough drinks and snacks and all that makes a good party, as she is waiting for Daniel's arrival, the boy she is in love with. Daniel, a naughty and rude guy, had made her cry for many times, but, still, she loves him for his best moments and the adventures that they had together. Nevertheless, this love story with Daniel is just one of the teenage love stories. Soon after the party, Daniel's place in her heart is taken by Matthew, an educated guy, who makes her feel important and protected. Adriana had thought for many times about how different Daniel had been from Matthew and what separated them from each other, but these comparisons vanished when she met George, a good-mannered guy, who was struggling to please her. Despite the fact that George did not inspire any particular feeling in her, she accepted him simply because he was nice, available and did nothing wrong.
After a couple of years, when Adriana looks in retrospect, all these relationships look beautiful and interesting. She is looking for meaning in all her experiences and wants to discover herself. “Am I more like who I was with Daniel? Or maybe more like who I was with Matthew ? Am I more the crazy girl having a row with my boyfriend in a park at 10 o clock at night as I did with Daniel ? Or maybe am I really the simplistic, uncommunicative girl stuck with ghosts of the past that I acted as with Matthew? Or maybe am I the non-sense young woman that George worships?”, writes she down.
These comparisons vanish, when Adriana meets Sebastian, the man who makes her feel like a profound and mature woman. She becomes more relaxed and deep in thoughts, more certain of her feelings. “What one person has denied to us we will try to get from the next, what we have lost we will keep searching for. There will be strings tying us up in the presence of some people because they will make us feel as if we are different persons every time. All the Daniels, the Matthews, or the Georges could not stand the sense that Sebastian was now enforcing. It is only Sebastian that cared meaning in her life, but she would never have more of him than what they had in the wild, cliffy mountains, at the old abbey.
The meaning of all these love stories, the interesting dialogues and the author's crafted and sensitive writing style make this novel to be worth reading it. No matter you are a teenager still looking for love or an adult, who distanced himself from the past, the book invites to meditation, analysis and nostalgia and could make one recognize herself in the stories or, at least, reconsider and revise her own experiences.